Ecuador

2018 · Painting with local materials · Quito, Tena & Baños

In 2018, Erin McGee Ferrell traveled to Ecuador with a deliberately limited supply of art materials and a question: what could she find locally to make paintings? A month based in Tena became an exploration of house paint, burlap, natural paints and pigments from the Amazon, and painting as a shared visual language.

Erin McGee Ferrell — painting of a covered rooftop with drying laundry in Tena, Ecuador. From the series made with house paint, burlap, and natural pigments.

Erin McGee Ferrell — painting of a covered rooftop with drying laundry in Tena, Ecuador. From the series made with house paint, burlap, and natural pigments.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a Tena streetscape with yellow taxis, pedestrians, and overhead wires, painted during her Ecuador project.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a Tena streetscape with yellow taxis, pedestrians, and overhead wires, painted during her Ecuador project.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a street in Tena, Ecuador, with a white car, colorful buildings, overhead wires, and green hills.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a street in Tena, Ecuador, with a white car, colorful buildings, overhead wires, and green hills.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a potted plant study from the Ecuador series, with layered earth tones, olive green, white, and visible material texture.

Erin McGee Ferrell — a potted plant study from the Ecuador series, with layered earth tones, olive green, white, and visible material texture.

An easel, brushes, and paint containers on a rooftop in Tena, Ecuador, where Erin McGee Ferrell worked.

An easel, brushes, and paint containers on a rooftop in Tena, Ecuador, where Erin McGee Ferrell worked.

Erin McGee Ferrell’s plein air painting setup on a Tena street, with a painting, brushes, and locally sourced supplies.

Erin McGee Ferrell’s plein air painting setup on a Tena street, with a painting, brushes, and locally sourced supplies.

Elías Mamallacta Alvarado, a Kichwa painter using ancestral traditions and natural paints and pigments from the Amazon forest, with Erin McGee Ferrell’s handmade-paper sketchbook, Ecuador, 2018. His interest in better paper helped inspire the propose

Elías Mamallacta Alvarado, a Kichwa painter using ancestral traditions and natural paints and pigments from the Amazon forest, with Erin McGee Ferrell’s handmade-paper sketchbook, Ecuador, 2018. His interest in better paper helped inspire the proposed Rooftop Papermaking Company in Tena.

Visitors discussing Erin McGee Ferrell’s Ecuador paintings displayed together in Tena.

Visitors discussing Erin McGee Ferrell’s Ecuador paintings displayed together in Tena.

About the Ecuador project

The journey began with museums, history, and markets in Quito, continued to Tena, and included Baños before returning to Quito. Encounters with Amazonian art, traditional symbols, and pigment making informed the work.

Amazon natural paints and pigments

Using her limited Spanish, Ferrell sourced canvas to mount on wood, burlap, house paint, and brushes from local shops and hardware stores. She primed burlap with house paint and developed the series using these practical materials alongside natural colors.

The most compelling experiments involved charcoal and pigments from Amazonian plants, including plants used in traditional medicine. Exploring their colors became a process of artistic and scientific discovery.

Elías Mamallacta Alvarado

Among the artists Ferrell encountered during the 2018 project was Elías Mamallacta Alvarado, a Kichwa painter from the Tena–Archidona area of Ecuador. His practice draws on ancestral Kichwa traditions and natural pigments from the Amazon forest. He is pictured in the project photographs above.

Rooftops and a shared visual language

Tena’s architecture offered unexpected places to paint. Covered, open-air rooftops served as spaces for daily life, from drying laundry to raising chickens, and became vantage points for observing the town.

Painting outdoors on Tena’s streets also opened conversations. Although Ferrell had studied Spanish on and off throughout her life, plein air painting offered another way to communicate. Shared attention to the work created camaraderie and friendship across differences in spoken language.

A sketchbook and a discovery

Ferrell had brought a sketchbook of thick, handmade watercolor paper. During her stay, she found that humidity made paper difficult to obtain and preserve, and the readily available options were largely ordinary writing paper.

Applying the Amazonian pigments to handmade watercolor paper produced a striking difference. Master painter Elías Mamallacta Alvarado was especially intrigued by the possibility of having better paper for his work. His interest helped inspire Ferrell’s proposal to make high-quality handmade paper locally.

Connections in Ecuador

The project included correspondence with Amazon Learning Services in Tena, Ecuador, whose programs are now presented under Beyond Travels, and contact with MedWater, based in Louisville, Kentucky. MedWater works with Fundación MedWater in Ecuador on community water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

The Rooftop Papermaking Company: a community art project

Ferrell left Ecuador in 2018 with a vision for the Rooftop Papermaking Company: a small handmade-paper production business on a rooftop in Tena. The proposed workshop would provide quality paper for local artists working with natural paints and pigments from the Amazon forest, supporting the creation of sustainable artwork that artists could sell.

A breast cancer diagnosis interrupted those plans. Ferrell is still seeking funding for this community art project: establishing a rooftop papermaking business in Tena, Ecuador, to make handmade paper more accessible to local artists. The project remains a proposal, rooted in her conversations with Mamallacta and the friendships formed through painting.

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Explore Projects & Press · Contact Erin about funding the Tena papermaking project